Jestin Pieper is a New York City based
concert and collaborative pianist,
vocal coach, organist, conductor, and educator.
“With conductor Jestin Pieper and music director and pianist William Hicks at the fore, leading a violin, cello, bassoon, and harp, the sound was still richly textured.”
Harry Forbes,
Forbes on Film & Footlights
7 March, 2020
Humoreske - Jestin Pieper, piano
John Davario writes in his biography of Schumann, "the Humoreske is among the least played of Schumann’s piano works but in many ways the most impressive of them all. A veritable compendium of his earlier keyboard styles, its affective range runs the gamut from unbridled joy to profound sorrow in a mosaic-like array of character portraits." In previous works—for example Carnival, Papillons, Davidbündlertanze, Kriesleriana, Album für die Jugend—each section is a separate but integral part of the whole. Humoreske exhibits his mastery of the character piece through episodes encompassing surprise, wit, anxiety, heartache, thoughtfulness, and melancholy that blur the lines of conventional formal structure. The result takes the listener on a journey of events that relate to each other more like a passages in a novel than a collection of short stories.
